Toilet paper shortages, mask shortages, and cleaning supply shortages are old news now. The pandemic and the lockdowns have spurred a second and third wave of shortages.
This is not normal in America. Our free market economy has typically prevented or curtailed shortages because once demand outstrips supply, the price system gives producers and distributors extra incentive to stock the shelves. We think of command economies when we think of shortages. The bread line in Russia is the standard image.
The coronavirus has changed things. People may want something, and businesses may want to make it or import it, but sometimes lockdowns make that impossible or illegal.
Hence, our odd set of shortages this August.
America is having its first-ever Dr. Pepper shortage, for instance. Sales rose more than 6% in the second quarter of 2020, and the Dr. Pepper factories haven’t been able to keep up. This is part of a bigger shortage: the aluminum shortage.
Brewers are putting more and more beer into cans, as glass bottles are a little less hip these days. Then, there’s the massive boom in seltzer, hard and soft. Flavored seltzers such as La Croix have seen massive growth in recent years as people look for calorie-free drinks that don’t taste like artificial sweetener. And, of course, there’s White Claw, the alcoholic seltzer, which represents the fastest growing beverage in America.
President Trump’s new aluminum shortages could exacerbate the aluminum can shortage.
Timber is also in short supply, because so many lumberjacks couldn’t go to work during lockdowns. You can see this firsthand if you live in a place such as Naples, Florida, where old boardwalks can’t get replaced because there’s not enough wood.
There’s more (less?).
Walk into a store, and you’re likely to see signs about the national coin shortage. There’s a gun shortage, as well.
One day, this virus won’t be the terror that it is today, and maybe then, you can grab a Dr. Pepper, a White Claw, and a gun a little more easily than you can today.
